Post by Gareth, Registration Lead, Welsh Revenue Authority
The Welsh Revenue Authority is creating a new online registration service for visitor accommodation providers in Wales. In this blog post, we share what we learned from building a mailing list to keep people updated.
Darllenwch y dudalen hon yn Gymraeg
Starting small
Back in January 2025, we had a simple idea: let’s build a mailing list sign-up to provide updates on visitor accommodation registration and the visitor levy.
A mailing list seemed like the perfect low-risk way to test our approach before launching the full registration service in autumn 2026.
A mailing list would help us to:
- share guidance, updates and deadlines before registration opens
- prototype something small, build it in-house and take it live
We kicked things off with a hackathon where I challenged 2 teams to create a prototype and delivery plan for how users could sign up for updates. The teams made great progress, creating a working plan with a clear intention: if the bill passed into law, we’d launch the mailing list at the same time.
That was a month ago. And only now are we launching the mailing list.
The reality of releasing something new
The process of releasing even a small product into a live environment taught us a lot and some lessons came the hard way.
We had to:
- stand up new processes from scratch
- learn how things actually work across different parts of the organisation
- navigate support, dependencies, and cross-team collaboration
- deal with surprises that crop up when you’re trying to do something new
We quickly learned that things which seem easy rarely are, especially without clear evidence or prior experience to back that assumption.
Catching issues early
One example of things going wrong came when we were ready to deploy the mailing list. We’d completed all the relevant testing. The service was functioning as expected, data was being saved correctly to the database, confirmation emails were being sent, and user sign-ups were working smoothly.
Everything looked good and we made the service live. Initially, everything appeared to be working and I signed up using my work email without any issues.
Later, I tried signing up on my phone using my personal email, I hit an error message: the system couldn’t complete my registration. I asked a colleague to try, and they encountered the same problem. It turned out to be a firewall configuration issue. The system was restricted to only accept certain email domains.
I’m glad we caught this before releasing it to thousands of users or using it for something critical. It’s a perfect example of how things can still go wrong despite thorough testing and why that’s okay. You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s why testing, feedback, and iteration are essential to uncovering issues and improving the product.
What we’re taking forward
We now have a far better understanding of what it will take to launch the full registration service in 2026.
We’ve seen how governance can help, but also where it needs careful consideration to avoid slowing things down. And while we talk about working in an agile way (and in many respects, we do), we’ve realised that releasing small and often is still something we need to get better at.
That’s now part of our ambition: embed a stronger culture of release, learn, iterate across everything we do.
What now?
You can now sign up to the mailing list to stay up to date with visitor accommodation registration and the visitor levy. You’ll get updates including when new guidance is published and when registration opens.
Have your say
We’d love to hear your thoughts on what we’ve shared so far and we’re always looking for people to test our designs with. If you’d like to share your thoughts or take part in research, contact us at wracommunications@wra.gov.wales.
Please note: Everything we share is work in progress and may change as we continue developing the service based on your feedback and what we learn through testing.